WOODBURY, New York, United States—Comverse announced Swedish mobile carrier Europolitan Vodafone will trial Comverse’s multimedia messaging service over its General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network.
Comverse’s announcement comes a week after the company released the results of a study it conducted to determine user interest in multimedia messaging services (MMS). The company found strong interest among business, residential and young subscribers.
The deal between Comverse and Europolitan Vodafone began in June when an internal technical trial was conducted with Europolitan Vodafone employees. The participants were equipped with either a WAP-enabled handset or a personal digital assistant to send and receive multimedia messages, which combine pictures and text. The second phase of the project, which will start in November, will focus on Europolitan Vodafone customers, specifically youth and young professionals.
“We chose Comverse as our MMS trial partner due to its leadership position in the emerging MMS market,” said Mikael Kluge, director of mobile Internet for Europolitan Vodafone. “We are pleased thus far with the results of our joint MMS trial. In the long run, we envision multimedia messaging becoming a highly popular mass market application, especially with the wide-scale deployment of our GPRS and UMTS next-generation networks.”
